WASHINGTON — Out-of-work with no place to land, the legions of America’s unemployed are growing. The Labor Department is scheduled to release a report Thursday expected to show the nation’s unemployment rate edging closer to double digits. Wall Street economists predict the jobless rate will rise to 9.6 percent in June from 9.4 percent in May. That would mark a 26-year high.

The rising rate comes as recession-weary companies continue to cut workers. Economists expect a loss of 363,000 jobs in June, up from 345,000 job cuts in May. Economists believe a chunk of those cuts will be tied to shutdowns at General Motors Corp. and fallout from the troubled auto industry.

Oh, goody! MORE broke people to fight with for crappy part-time jobs at Family Video and Sonic! But economy watchers swear the worst it over! Really this time! Stop laughing! They’re serious!

(I)f economists’ forecasts are correct, it would be consistent with the belief that the worst of employers’ payrolls cuts have occurred. Companies are expected to keep shedding jobs through the rest of this year, but economists hope the pace will continue to taper off.

Oh, they HOPE it’ll taper off. Yeah. Hoping will get pa his job back at the mill. Hoping and correspondence courses at the technical college so he can become a medical billing assistant.

Danielle,*Psh posh*. Indeed. My DH was "let go" from his job of 25 years in April. This trend of employers cutting their losses by eliminating positions will continue, I believe forever. So….if you are still working a full 40 hours a week…..consider yourself pretty darn lucky. All I’m sayin’ is that you may be next. My daddy was right, the days of folks working a job until retirement are over (& he told me this back in 1970)!

Oh, such news warms my heart. I couldn’t adequately express my jubilance over finishing graduate school this year, only to struggle in my search for employment. I salute those who are able to keep their jobs – at least y’all have income coming in!

I, of course, flew to sit on the Obama band wagon. I mean, come on, who didn’t. What I want to know is where exactly are these stimulus jobs that he keeps bragging about? And don’t even get me started on why people who are on unemployment are being taxed when they receive their unemployment benefits.

I lived through the recession of ’82 and it felt like a depression. I’m so glad I’m not in the working world right now. I’m considering a move to latin america, but if the dollar loses its value, my goose is cooked. I’m still not going to worry. Que sera, sera!

Lark:Unemployment benefits are taxed as income because they are considered to be income under the IRS Code. I can understand it might be better not to tax them but with so many things it is a political decision.

“Hoping will get pa his job back at the mill. Hoping and correspondence courses at the technical college so he can become a medical billing assistant.”Yep. It all SEEMED so nice, when ya could go to Wal-Mart/Target/Mega-Whateva, and buy those cheap Chinese goods. Until you realize, years too late, that crap came at the expense of American manufacturing, decent paying jobs and long-term real careers like Tool & Die makers once had.Worse part about it all was not that the Wal-Mart’s couldn’t stay out of the ‘red ink’ using American based manufacturing, they could just get it cheaper and increase Profit by dumping out to “off-shore” suppliers (read cheap, subsidized Chinese factories). It wasn’t about staying in business; it was (and still is) about lining their upper 0.01% deep pockets with even more.And then they got the NERVE to tell us “We offer JOBS. Real Jobs. At minimum wage.” Best thing that could happen? That China’s ‘junk yard dog’, aka North Korea, really goes and does something stupid. Not a full-scale ‘duke-out’, but enough to close out China as a (totally one-sided) “Trading Partner” (heck, only “trading” we do with them is financing our debt). Their goods stuck right on their docks. You’d see HUGE, MASS moves to fire up all those machine shops, manufacturing facilities, assembly plants, plastic injection shops, etc, that lay vacant in Detroit/Cleveland/Pittsburg/any once-great manufacturing area. Guaranteed, one year in on that and America couldn’t find and employ enough skilled and non-skilled labor to fill that hole.But, that’d hurt the pockets of the ‘controller’s’, those at that stratospheric upper 0.01% economic level. Can’t be havin’ THAT crap, now can we? Geez, thinkin’ we’d be cuttin’ in to their billions. It’s why they have a million circular arguments about why that’d be bad for “us” and would hurt “us” and threaten “our” lifestyle and be bad economic policy for “us”. Then what would there be to “trickle” down to you and me, if they didn’t have so much?Uh, you mean it AIN’T tricklin’ down …? Gotta go get my unemployment check now. See ya!Guess we all can end up workin’ at BurgerKing (where I’ll work), to eat at Taco Bell (so you can keep that job). Recovery on it’s WAY baby! Service Industry-based economy indeed!

Both me and my husband was let got of our jobs four months ago. He just got hired with a new firm two weeks ago and it was thanks to the Stimulus money. The firm that hired him and five hundred other new people said they were able to it because of the money. He was hired just in time to because we almost got evicted last month after running low on money. However, I’m still looking for work and he is holding down the household paying off the bills.

I received a layoff notice from my "day job" two weeks ago but yesterday interviewed with a government contractor administering one of the stimulus programs here in Texas, they are going to be hiring 800 people so fingers crossed. So there are tangible "beyond hope" programs trickling in.